Boston

– This morning US time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued an emergency security directive banning on certain electronic gadgets being taken brought into cabins on some flights to the USA. Of course, we knew about the ban already, because Royal Jordanian tweeted about it yesterday! Where they got the information from and why they announced it is a mystery. They also were in error suggesting that the ban applied to US originating flights. There has been a suggestion they inadvertently published information from a TSA circular that was…

I am fast closing in my 200th city that I have visited with over 100,000 inhabitants. With each city, I rate their: Natural and Built aesthetics Their liveability Their Culture Crime rates and safety Transportation Their “Vibe 12 of my favourite cities are in Europe, nine in the USA, five in Asia,four in the UK, two in Canada, four in Australia, one in New Zealand, one in South America and two in the Middle East. My top 40 cities ranked are: 1 Paris 2 Berlin 3 Barcelona 4 San Francisco 5 Melbourne 6 Adelaide 7 Stockholm…

As air travellers are aware, airports are marked by a three digit code managed by IATA. This system allows for 17,576 airport codes with all the combinations. Apparently there are 43,982 airports in the world so many apparently do not have commercial service! Some of these three digit codes are “logical” eg SYD for SYDNEY, SEA for Seattle and EDI for Edinburgh. Some are less so EZE for the Buenos Aires suburb that the airport is located in. Toronto Pearson, Canada is YYZ for historical reasons and IAD is Washington-Dulles. I was struck by a post on Boardingarea site: Pointswithacrew about…

On January 7, 2013 a JAL Boeing 787 landed at Boston Logan airport. It had flown as JAL008 from Tokyo Narita. The 787 had logged only 22 pressurisation cycles (basically the number of times it had been in the air) and 169 flight hours. It parked at the gate at 1006am local time. All 183 passengers and 11 crew left the plane. At 1032am the Cleaning and maintenance crew noticed smoke in cabin. Three minutes later, a mechanic noted flames coming from APU battery in the aft (rear) electronics bay. The Airport Rescue & Fire Fighting were notified at 1037am and the fire…